In this ever-more “social” world, it’s likely you’ve already been asked to produce something for Facebook, Twitter, or one of the many other ways in which we share our lives. While FCP X is pretty good at this — quick exports and custom frame sizes certainly help — a few bells and whistles will help elevate your video over a simple edit. Here are ten ways you can enhance your social media videos — and your skills. 1. Three Pack by Stupid Raisins The first of these three free plug-ins is “Sign Pop”, and it includes a selection of...

If you want to open with a title, but don’t want a blank background or video behind it, some kind of synthetic background is just what you need. There are plenty of great generators built in to FCP X, but if you want something a little less common, look no further. This collection includes a wide range of options, and you should find at least one that will suit your project perfectly. 1. Christmas Crap! — A Gift by Charlie Austin What better time of year to nab this collection of generators? While it’s true that most of these are...

As viewers, we are far less forgiving of bad audio than we are of bad images. And even with good microphones, good recorders, good voice talent and good technique, you’ll need to know plenty about audio in FCP X to do a good job. Here are ten ways to help you learn all the tricks hidden deep inside FCP X. Please note that some of these tutorials show the older FCP X interface used before version 10.3, but they’ve still got good information to share. 1. Audio Fade Settings by Dan Allen You probably already know that it’s easy to fade any...

Something a little different today — we’re going to look at ten different ways to use a single product. It’s still free, but there are definitely more tricks to it than meets the eye. It’s CoreMelt’s SliceX Free, and you get it by going to this page and filling out the form for a free license. What’s the catch? The free version works only with rectangles, ovals, and the rounded rectangles between. The paid version also lets you draw any kind of shape you like, with a bezier shape tool or freehand. Both use mocha's planar tracking to follow an object as...

Another Top 10 Amazing Free Transitions Didn’t get enough transitions in our last top ten roundup? Here’s a bunch more you can use to punch up a boring presentation, disguise a forced edit, or create that perfect segue from scene A to scene B. There’s actually about 21 transitions in this list, which makes it particularly good value — especially as they’re all free. 1. Premonition by Alex4D The incoming shot (or a chosen frame elsewhere on the timeline) strobes in and out in a chosen pattern, foreshadowing something that’s about to happen. Always handy. 2. Flip Transitions...